Starches are extensively used as a thickening agent for a variety of aqueous based products (e.g., cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, industrial and food products). Unmodified and pregelled starches from a variety of starch sources such as tapioca, corn, high amylose, sweet potato, potato, waxy maize, canna, arrowroot, sorghum, waxy sorghum, waxy rice, sago rice, etc. have been employed as thickening agents. Starches are frequently modified or derivatized with a host of chemical reagents to alter its functional properties. An infinite number of product variations can arise by simply altering the product's starch component.
A consumer of starch thickened products can typically select either an inexpensive, inconvenient, starch-containing dry mix or a convenient, expensive, ready-to-use product. These two approaches to the marketing starch-containing products are illustrated by the manufacture and distribution of starch-containing food products.
Directly consumable, aqueous based starch food products are convenient, but prone to degradative changes (e.g., microbial, enzymatic, chemical and/or physical spoilage). Due to manufacturing, packaging, distribution costs and other difficulties therewith, the ultimate customer will normally pay more for these directly consumable starch products.
Starch-containing, dry food mixes are more easily manufactured and distributed to the trade as well as being quite stable against degradation. The consumer, however, has the inconvenience of converting the starch along with the other mix ingredients into the desired end product. If the prescribed recipe is not followed, the desired end product will not be prepared. If the recipe does not include a cooking step, a cold-water dispersible starch (e.g., pregelled starch) is generally employed. When the recipe entails cooking, either a modified or an unmodified starch may be used.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,770,461 by A. P. Stewart et al., a process for preparing a directly consumable fruit pudding product is disclosed. Fruit puddings are highly acidic. The Stewart et al. patentees disclose that when the starch was heated and sterilized in the presence of fruit pudding acidulents, its thickening properties were destroyed. To obviate this problem, the patentees separately heat sterilize an aqueous starch portion and the acidulent portion, cool both portions and combine both portions to provide the desired ready-to-eat fruit pudding product. British Patent No. 1,304,519 discloses an atypical starch-containing food product. Although this product contains water, the British patentees utilize a starch system wherein a starch is coblended with an aqueous sugar medium. The ultimate consumer thereof mixes the aqueous coblend with boiling water and/or boiling milk to provide a cooked, thickened food product. This particular recipe allegedly overcomes the balling and/or lumping effect frequently encountered in preparing puddings which contain a pregelled starch while affording a microbiologically stable food product.
The inventors sought a starch-containing product which would combine the desirable attributes of the starch-containing dry mixes and the aqueous-based, ready-to-consume products. Such a product would desirably avoid the aqueous-based starch product's susceptibility to degradative changes. It was further desirable to avoid the inconvenience of the dry mix recipes, and particularly finding a recipe which would not require a cooking step to thicken the starch while providing greater recipe tolerance and uniformity in achieving the desired starch thickened effect. Such a product would provide the consumer with an alternate means for preparing starch-thickened products at a more advantageous cost.